Announcements made today at CTIA showed that navigation services are an increasingly important offering on the mobile phone, and conversations with both Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) and AT&T (NYSE: T), revealed that it might even become a hub for future social-networking-type services. Both carriers gave hints at what the services would be like, saying that it would enable friends, colleagues or family members to see where each other are at any particular time.

AT&T: The company announced today that it was renaming its TeleNav navigation service to AT&T Navigator, and will be offering it for the first time on a feature phone—the Moto Z9, which was also launched today. Two of the features today include voice recognition and traffic, however, in the future Rob Hyatt, AT&T’s executive director of premium content, said you can imagine a different scenario, where you can see the location of others along with maps and traffic. Or from the address book, you could pull up a friend, and see where they are, or designate a meeting place that everyone can see on their handset.

Verizon Wireless: Verizon has a similar idea of the future. Today, it launched a traffic service on its VZ Navigator service that allows people to see where the roads are congested and find detours. The service is powered by Networks in Motion, although Verizon relies on Navteq for maps. Alex Hyman, Verizon’s Associate Director of Entertainment Products, said they are currently testing a location service, where you can see the location of friends. He said in the test case it was so accurate that when he was in a meeting with others, the application showed on the screen that the users were all right next to each other. He said a live service will likely not be as accurate.